DeepMind’s research could make waves in medical science, Arm debuts bendy chips, and the NSCAI’s summit attracts a D.C. who’s who

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Worth Knowing

DeepMind Shares Thousands of Modeled Proteins — and the AI Behind It: Last week, DeepMind, the UK-based AI company owned by Alphabet Inc., released a database of more than 350,000 protein structures predicted by its protein-folding AI, AlphaFold, and announced plans to model more than 100 million structures over the coming months. The news came a week after DeepMind released AlphaFold v2.0’s source code and published a paper in the journal Nature explaining its methods. As we covered last December, AlphaFold made waves when it successfully modeled protein structures with an accuracy equivalent to state-of-the-art methods in a fraction of the time — AlphaFold mapped proteins that took humans months, years, or even decades to model. Observers say DeepMind’s decision to release its work — including predictions for the structures of nearly every protein in the human body — could help accelerate biochemical research and drug development.
Arm Debuts Flexible Chips That Could Help Expand the IoT: The chip designer Arm unveiled a flexible microchip that could allow cheap, low-powered processors to be incorporated into everyday objects such as food labels, bandages and clothing. As described in an article in the journal Nature, Arm partnered with the company PragmatIC to place metal-oxide thin-film transistors on a flexible substrate. Unlike transistors fabricated on inflexible silicon wafers, Arm’s processors can be printed on materials such as paper or plastic, letting them bend without breaking. While the processors are extremely low-powered and inefficient compared to silicon-based chips, Arm says they could be incorporated into everyday items and used to perform simple tasks, such as monitoring produce for spoilage. Arm has yet to announce any production or licensing plans.   
Competition Between TSMC and Intel Heats Up: With the global semiconductor shortage showing few signs of abating, the world’s biggest chipmakers are pouring billions into new factories (and courting governments willing to foot some of the bill):
Despite massive investments in new facilities and ramped-up production, the chip shortage is likely to endure for some time. With factories taking years to come online, Intel’s Gelsinger says it could be 2023 before things return to normal.        
Government Updates

NSCAI Summit Features AI Remarks From D.C. Big-Wigs: Earlier this month, the National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence hosted a summit in Washington, D.C., that featured remarks from a who’s who of U.S. policymakers and foreign representatives. The summit served as a capstone to the commission’s work and publication of its final report. Speakers included Secretaries Austin, Blinken and Raimondo, Senators Schumer, Ernst, Warner and Young, OSTP Director Eric Lander, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, as well as a number of foreign dignitaries, including Executive Vice President of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Topics that featured prominently included: strategic competition with China, the importance of partnerships between like-minded democracies, the need to maintain and support democratic values, and the failure of the United States and its allies to lead the way on international standard setting for emerging technologies, such as 5G and AI. During his remarks, Secretary Austin announced plans to direct $1.5 billion over the next five years to the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (though funding will ultimately be up to Congress — see the story below) and confirmed that the JAIC has been elevated to report to Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, per the NSCAI’s recommendation. Sullivan, meanwhile, painted a grim picture of the future of U.S.-China technological competition absent significant federal investment and international cooperation, and to that end endorsed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act passed last month by the Senate (for more on that bill, see our recent coverage).

NDAA Draft Passes Senate Committee — House Version in the Works: Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022. While the bill’s text has not yet been released, a SASC summary indicates it includes several provisions related to AI and emerging technologies. According to the summary, the NDAA would implement “a number of recommendations from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, including accelerating processes to apply artificial intelligence capabilities to military systems, processes, and operations.” (For more on the NSCAI’s March report, see our coverage here.) The summary also includes plans to establish a commission on “Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution” reform, which observers say could lead to an overhaul of the acquisitions process to make it better-suited for emerging technologies. Among the bill’s other provisions are a number of research funding increases and a plan to establish a national microelectronics research network, as mandated by the CHIPS for America Act included in last year’s NDAA. The House Armed Services Committee is considering its version of the NDAA this week, but it will not be finalized until after the full committee markup in September.  

Executive Branch Appointment News — Nominations & Withdrawals: President Biden announced his intent to nominate Laurie E. Locasio to be director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, while Michael Brown withdrew his nomination to become the Defense Department’s undersecretary for acquisition. Locasio worked at NIST for more than three decades before joining the University of Maryland system in 2017. If confirmed, Locasio would oversee NIST during a significant expansion — the Biden administration proposed a 45 percent funding increase for the agency as part of its 2022 budget request. While Locasio’s appointment process has thus far been relatively drama-free, Michael Brown’s was anything but. His request to have his nomination withdrawn following a re-surfaced complaint from a former civil servant in the DOD — where Brown headed the Defense Innovation Unit — was lambasted as a “national security disaster” by Slate’s longtime “War Stories” columnist, Fred Kaplan. Brown remains the head of DIU, but his appointment had been seen as a “potential sea change” for DOD, and the withdrawn nomination leaves the Pentagon’s acquisition operation in flux. A replacement has not yet been named.

CSET Job Openings

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  • Research Fellow – AI TEV&V will focus on the safety and risk of deployed AI systems by researching real-world AI incidents and use these identified incidents with other analyses of AI systems to inform policy recommendations regarding AI safety, test, evaluation, verification and validation (TEV&V) processes, standards setting and management, and the appropriate employment and operation of AI systems by businesses and the US Government (including the military). Applications due by August 1
In Translation
CSET’s translations of significant foreign language documents on AI

PRC Cyber Plan: Open Solicitation of Opinions on the Three-Year Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of the Cybersecurity Industry (2021-2023) (Draft for Solicitation of Opinions). This July 2021 document is a draft PRC government plan for the near-term development of China’s cybersecurity industry. It names a host of specific cybersecurity technologies that the Chinese government is encouraging PRC companies to pursue. China allowed the public to comment on this draft plan, but only for a four-day period. 

PRC Ministry of S&T Press Conference: Press Conference on the “Launch and Implementation of the National Key R&D Program”: Summary Transcript. This transcript of a 2016 PRC Ministry of Science and Technology press conference announces the creation of China’s overarching “National Key R&D Program.” Notably, the National Key R&D Program absorbs the former 973 and 863 Programs, two major PRC technology development plans that had been in place for decades.

If you have a foreign-language document related to security and emerging technologies that you’d like translated into English, CSET may be able to help! Click here for details.

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What We’re Reading (and Listening To)

Report: Defense Acquisition in Russia and China, Mark Ashby, Caolionn O’Connell, Edward Geist, Jair Aguirre, Christian Curriden and Jon Fujiwara, RAND Corporation (2021) 

Podcast: Labs over Fabs: Why the US and EU Should Invest in the Future of Semiconductors, Jordan Schneider, Chris Miller and JP Kleinhans, China Talk Podcast (July 2021) 

Report: A Proposal for Identifying and Managing Bias in Artificial Intelligence, Reva Schwartz, Leann Down, Adam Jonas and Elham Tabassi, NIST (June 2021) 

Article: Reading Race: AI Recognises Patient’s Racial Identity in Medical Images, Imon Banerjee, et al., arXiv (July 2021)

Of Interest

The Future Society: Survey on AI systems used in COVID-19 pandemic response. Were you involved in developing an AI system used in COVID-19 pandemic response? Please support research being conducted by The Future Society, the GPAI AI & Pandemic Response Subgroup, and the OECD by completing this survey by August 2nd. 

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